Well I finally did it. I updated our website. This has been one of those projects that has just given me hell and grief through the years. Not to mention, costing us thousands of dollars, only to be frustrated and unhappy with the end results. Finally after almost ten years of disappointments. I had pretty much given up on our website and decided to just stick with our original website with all its flaws.

But every time I would look at my original website, it would just upset me all over again, knowing that it could be better. So after one last bold search for help, I decided enough was enough. I was going to build this website myself. I built our original site for Shark Diver Magazine, after disappointing results with website programmers for the first website we had built. The thing with website programmers I feel is they always want to get too fancy. They learn some new tech stuff in school, or want to experiment with a graphic art tool they heard about and often try to make it too cool and usually end up crapping it up.

I know I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but somehow I was going to get the damn website built. Through the advice of a good friend (thank you Jero), I checked out Square Space and decided to try it out. After a full day of fumbling around with it, I decided I was to going to use this platform and a template I was happy with and made it my own.

So this is what you guys have, the new look and feel of SDM adventures… we are using sdmdiving.com, as our main url right now, mostly because I am still trying to figure out how to add sdmadventures.com to our website. and there is way to much history with SharkDiverMag.com to let that one disappear. But eventually I will let it go and move the url over to this site as well…baby steps.

The first thing was updating the core of what we do here at SDM which is who we are, and what we do, which is, travel. Then it was figuring out how to give you guys more content and a gallery of images to look at. We have so many pictures, so many moments that are just collecting dust on hard drives. This was something I had always wanted to do, (create galleries) but was never able to quite do that before. The next is a user friendly blog page. Well user friendly for me. I have always loved blogging, but it was a pain in the ass with the old setup.

I have been posting blogs on my old site, SharkDiverMag.com, since 2005. Right now, sadly, I am not able to incorporate all those old stories and rambling mess into what I have here. But maybe I can, somehow link those old pages on here? There is so much history there. Again, baby steps.

The next big thing is our store…well, that has remained the hardest part for us to incorporate into a website. For whatever reason. It has been a nasty stumbling block. In fact that is why I have always tried to hire people to help me. I wanted a really good store. So when I went to web developers asking them to build me a store, somehow they always wanted to do more than just build a store for us - they wanted to redesign the whole thing. I would always say yes, ( so of course this nightmare is my fault.). Shortly after thousands were spent, the entire project would become a huge disaster. With of course, surprise, surprise... no working store.

Hopefully, it wont be on this new site. I am currently working on it and once it is done, I will proudly share it with you all. I have always wanted a store with our shirts and rash guards, back issues of our magazine, but also an art gallery with prints of moments we have captured through out the years. I will share that with you when its ready. But for now, I am excited to present to you guys, the new and improved website. It is visually pretty amazing. I do hope you enjoy it and return again and again. Yes, I will be updating it quite a bit and of course our blog to incorporate both video and written blogs. There are so many stories left to tell and adventures to share.

For all our friends who have been with us from the beginning, this is for you…thank you so much for sticking with us through it all.